


a violent silence

by celestixl



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Established Relationship, Keith in Lance's jacket, POV Keith (Voltron), Sharing Clothes, and lance in keith's jacket, wow it's practically christmas...............
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 03:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11912175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestixl/pseuds/celestixl
Summary: It wasn’t meant to turn out this way.The halls of the castle rang with stunning silence.Keith had never felt more alone in his entire life.





	a violent silence

**Author's Note:**

> idk where in the timeline this fits,, canon-compliant whom?? don’t know her 
> 
> also i’m sorry

It wasn’t meant to turn out this way. 

They were paladins of Voltron, five indispensable pieces running smooth like clockwork. Allura and Coran practically the heart of the operation, if you thought about it long enough. In tune, aligned, precise and ferocious, a team that would save the universe. They’d made it this far, against all odds -- just a couple of kids, mostly, light years away from home, thrust into a life of adventure and excitement and, yes, danger. They’d all known this, when they’d agreed; every one of them had known they would be putting their lives in danger every time they climbed into a lion, every time they retook a planet, every time they faced off with the Galra. They’d had close calls, numerous times, breathless laughter and frantic hugs after mission to ascertain everyone was ok: Lance winding his long limbs around a shaking Pidge, Shiro with his hands on either sides of Keith’s white face, Hunk gripping tight to Allura’s shoulders, eyes worried. 

But they’d come so far, all of them finding ways to fit into and around each other, learning to move past initial prejudices and hostilities, fighting together until they knew, with absolute certainty, that they always had each other's backs, no matter what. Somehow, they’d all believed they’d make it back to earth, no matter how insurmountable the odds seemed sometimes, no matter what dead end they were facing at that moment, that fight. They’d all made plans, lives, despite the constant danger. 

They’d all thought they’d make it back to earth. 

It wasn’t meant to turn out this way. 

The halls of the castle rang with stunning silence. 

Keith had never felt more alone in his entire life. 

It didn’t matter that they were all there for each other. Quiet touches when passing, unexpected hugs that Keith had come to allow, a shared sense of grief that hung heavy in the air, all of them trying as hard as possible to stay busy, to keep moving, to do anything _but_ pause, because taking a break meant letting the thoughts in, letting reality sink and sink and sink until it dragged them down with it. 

It didn’t matter that they were all there for each other, because Keith felt like something had been ripped directly out of his body, or his mind, or his soul, or maybe all three at once, and that last option would explain the totality of the loneliness he felt. Loneliness he hadn’t experienced, not even in all his years of sitting at foster family home after home, jumping from school to school, staring up at an infinite sky while standing on an infinite desert, alone. 

Lance was gone, and Keith wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now. 

\---

It wasn’t meant to turn out this way. 

The mission had been going so well, surprisingly well, in fact, and maybe that should have tipped them off to something being wrong, but instead all of them rode the high of a nearing victory. 

Hunk whooped as he crushed one of the Galra blasters on the planet’s surface; Pidge’s answering laugh echoing over the comms. 

It was a fairly straightforward mission: rescue a few high profile prisoners, get as much info out of the communications base as possible, and then destroy the base. The planet’s inhabitants were peaceful and with minimal supervision from the Galra, so the base had mainly tech and support personnel, rather than fighters. 

Pidge was taking care of extracting the info, with Shiro providing cover. Hunk in his lion and Allura and Coran in the castle were keeping the Galra ships occupied. Which left Keith and Lance getting the four prisoners out and into the forest ringing the Galra base, at which point their own people would take over and get them safely home. 

Easy. In and out. Clean. 

Shiro’s voice filtered across the comms as Lance and Keith came across the first wave of Galra defense. “Pidge is about half done; Lance, Keith, how much longer?” 

Lance answered as he picked off fighters one by one, Keith a blur ahead of him, sword flying through limbs and torsos. “In the right hallway, just ran into a group of -- motherfu--” He ducked a flying blade, popped back up, and resumed. “soldiers, I guess Hunk’s distraction didn’t draw all of them out, give us fifteen minutes tops.” 

“Ten,” Keith corrected, kicking the last standing Galra soldier squarely in the chest and then driving his sword into its midriff. 

Lance raised his eyebrows at Keith. “You sound confident; wanna bet on it?” 

“Shut the fuck up, Lance.” 

“Make meeee,” Lance sang back to Keith as they ran towards the door at the end of the hallway, where the prisoners were being kept. 

Someone -- probably Pidge -- gagged loudly and dramatically over the comms, and Lance winked at Keith. 

Keith just grinned back, predatory in the way his eyes skimmed Lance’s form, used to Lance’s unsubtle flirting, then turned back to the business at hand. Pidge had, thankfully, unlocked the door earlier, and all he did now was pry it open to reveal four aliens huddling in a corner. 

He slammed the door shut, barricaded it as best he could with the spare furnishings in the room, already talking. 

“Alright, we’re breaking you out, but we need to hurry. Just trust us.” The four nodded mutely. “Lance?” 

“Yep,” was Lance’s chipper reply, and aimed his bayard at the ceiling, popping the grate off a wide vent in seconds. 

“There’s an unused service corridor running directly above that vent, less of a chance of being stopped if we go that way, I’ll go first to open the passage from the vent to the hallway for you, then just run and it should lead straight to an exit towards the forest. Your people are waiting there,” Keith explained, even as Lance positioned himself under the vent and Keith placed a foot in Lance’s locked hands. He gripped Lance’s shoulders, eyes locked, and Lance catapulted him straight up, lean muscles rippling with effort. Keith’s hands grabbed the edge of the vent, barely, but they didn’t have time for second tries, so he held on and dragged the rest of his body up over the edge, then turned to help Lance get the four prisoners into the vent as well. 

A loud banging made Keith almost drop the last one, but he managed to pull her up into the vent as Lance spun on his heel to face the door, gun ready. 

The door splintered. 

“Lance! Get over here, let me pull you up!” Keith yelled down, but Lance shook his head, focus not wavering from the shaking door. 

“No, get them into the service corridor first, if I go up they’ll catch us too quickly, I can hold them off long enough for you to get them out, then I’ll come up,” Lance replied. 

Lance was right, and Keith didn’t have time to deliberate any more, no matter how torn he suddenly was. He sprang up and ran at a low crouch to the point where the vent reached the service corridor, then cut directly through the thin metal, his sword a blur. Shouldering the metal inwards to form a path, he ushered the prisoners through, pointing them in the right direction, yelling, “Move!” in a hoarse whisper, hyper-aware of the distant sounds of fighting somewhere below and away. 

As soon as the last one was through, Keith was sprinting back faster than he’d thought physically possible in such a low space, breath loud in his ears. He slid to the hole, and without thinking it through, jumped down, directly onto the back of a Galra. It crumpled beneath him, and when Keith popped back up into a fighting stance, he was face to face with more of them. Luckily, the vent had been near a wall, so he wasn’t surrounded. Unluckily, there were approximately three Galra between him and where Lance stood, alternating between firing his bayard, the close range leaving the Galra mangled, and striking out physically with the bayard and his fists. 

Keith’s only thought was they had to get out. Get out get out get out. Even as more soldiers pushed into the suddenly too-small room, even as the odds decreased. 

His sword was a blur, cutting through midriffs and arms and guns alike, a smaller knife in his other hand for when the Galra came too close. He was by Lance’s side after what felt both like only a second and an entire century, and it was then, only then, that Keith noticed the red stain spreading across the side of Lance’s torso, the paleness of Lance’s face, the stiffness of some of his movements, even as he continued to fight. 

“Lance, Lance! Fuck, Lance, Jesus Christ, we need to go, we need to get out.” Keith knew he was practically babbling in his panic; even as he spoke, blades still whirling through air and bodies, he felt dread sink into his stomach at how far the door seemed from them now. 

Confused shouts came from the other end of the comms, Shiro’s voice booming out above them all. “What the hell is happening? You guys need to get out, we’re done on our end.” 

Keith couldn’t reply through the tightness in his chest. 

“ _Lance, Keith_ ,” came the more urgent plea.

“We’re trapped--”

“He’s fucking injured--” 

They spoke over each other, both at once, and then Keith burst out, “Lance is injured, we’re trapped, it’s a dead end.” 

“ _Shit_.” Pidge’s voice, now. 

They were barely holding off the Galra at this point; the door seemed a faraway dream. A hallucination, practically. 

“Ok, I can override the commands in some of these doors, I think the prison one too, to explode, but you guys _need_ to be as far from the door as possible if I do this, and it’s risky, it can go bad really fast.” 

“Do whatever, we’re far from the door, we can handle it,” Keith replied frantically, running out of options. He could see Lance struggle to hold himself upright, and wondered, panicked, how badly the wound actually was. 

“Lance, as soon as the blast goes, we’ll go by the vent too, while they’re distracted.”

Another Galra soldier went down from a blast from Lance’s bayard straight into its chest. Lance shook his head. “I’m not gonna be able to pull myself up,” he replied grimly, all humor and lightness gone from his face. 

“We--” Keith’s voice cracked. Another two soldiers went down at the end of his blade. “We don’t have any other option, Lance, we can’t make it out before Pidge blows the door, and it’s the only other exit.” 

“Go without me.” 

“I _won’t_ ,” was Keith’s vehement reply, ripped from his throat almost violently, and punctuated with his sword puncturing a Galra’s lung. 

“Three seconds,” Pidge warned, and the door exploded. 

Keith barely had time to shield his eyes and throw himself partially in Lance’s way. As the furthest Galra burst in flames also, he cut the ones nearest down in quick, precise strokes while they were distracted, then turned to Lance. 

Without further preamble, he said, “I’m so sorry,” laid Lance over his shoulder as gently as he could -- not gently enough, judging by the ragged sob that flew through Lance’s body as his midriff touched Keith’s shoulder -- and used the fallen Galra as a sort of stairs to get high enough to grip the edge of the vent, again, and pull himself up, arms straining with the added weight. Adrenaline and panic coursed through him in a violent but effective mix, and they both toppled into the vent sideways. 

Lance’s breath was coming out in short, wheezing gasps, but Keith knew he couldn’t stop to think about it too long, or he wouldn’t be able to move again with the panic of the situation sinking in. 

“Lance, please, we have to go, Lance, _Lance_ ,” Keith urged, snaking an arm under Lance’s, in order to support him. Lance drew in a large breath, then stood, air hissing out through gritted teeth as he straightened. 

“Ok, let’s go.” 

His voice was faint, too faint. 

It was fine, they would make it to the cryopods in time. The wound couldn’t be that bad; Lance was standing, after all. It would be fine. 

They half ran, half stumbled their way through the vent and the blessedly empty corridor. Over the comms, Keith could hear as Shiro, Hunk, Pidge, Allura, and Coran waged war with the remaining Galra fighter jets. At least they were all in their lions. 

As soon as Keith and Lance reached the open door through which the prisoners had left, Keith scooped Lance into his arms, bridal style, and started sprinting towards Red. He knew Blue would be able to follow, even pilotless. 

“ _Fuck_ , Keith, go righ-” Lance yelled, but it was too late -- pain ripped through the side of his left thigh, his leg gave out, and he stumbled, both him and Lance toppling to the ground violently. Another blast went off near Keith’s head, right in front of his eyes, Lance screamed, and stars flew through his vision, sparkling bright and fiery and eliminating any chance of him retaliating effectively. But he felt Lance’s fingers grip one of the knives at his belt, and then heard a body fall. 

“He’s down, Keith, Keith, please, get up, you have to go, you have to--” Lance’s words were barely two steps away from slurring, his breath wheezing. 

Keith’s vision cleared, and he staggered to his feet, picked Lance up again, and ignoring the urge to scream as pain dug its fingers deep into his leg, started sprinting again, now limping heavily. 

“Just leave me, Keith,” a pained breath, “the last guy, he,” another, “got me again,” a wheezing cough, blood splattering at the edges of Lance’s mouth and staining his teeth, “you have to make it out safe, you have to, I don’t think I’m gonna ma--” 

“Shut up,” Keith replied, his voice cracking and his words sharp. “Shut up shut up it’s going to be fine we’ll get you to the castle and into a cryopod and it’ll be fine it’ll be fine--” 

Red was waiting for them, anxious, and Keith flew into the cockpit. He didn’t even need to say anything before Red was taking over, flying towards the castle as quickly as possible. 

Keith laid Lance out on the floor, kneeling beside him. Lance’s eyes were fluttering shut weakly, and Keith felt like screaming.

“Lance, you can’t go to sleep, please, hold on, let me--” He pushed to his feet and stumbled to a storage space, pulling gauze and cloth out, before rushing back to press it to Lance’s wounds. 

They were soaked through with red within seconds. Keith could no longer see the white of Lance's breastplate through the red, but he couldn’t see the full extent of the damage beneath the paladin suit and all the blood, either. 

“Keith. Keith. _Keith_.” Lance’s voice was soft at first, then more insistent, and Keith stopped frantically trying to mop up the blood on Lance’s chest. Lance’s bloodstained hand went up to rest on Keith’s cheek, his thumb framing Keith’s chin. 

Keith didn’t realize he was crying until Lance’s long fingers brushed under his eye and he felt his tears get swiped across his cheek. 

“Keith. I love you,” Lance said, quietly, eerily calm, blue eyes holding Keith’s gaze captive. 

“No, no, you can’t talk like that, you’re going to make it, don’t act like… like--” Keith hiccupped as a sob tore through his sentence before he could finish it. 

“It’s ok, Keith, it’s ok, it’s ok,” Lance’s voice soothed. “Just… tell my family, ok, my parents… that I love them, _los amo_ , that I miss them so much.” 

And at that, Keith lost it. 

He could see his tears fall and mix with Lance’s blood on the floor, could feel his fingers, his entire body, shaking, trembling. 

“Lance, don’t go, don’t, please, I love you, I love you I love you--” 

Lance’s fingers tugged at his face weakly from where they still sat, and Keith leaned over to press his lips to Lance’s, once, twice, softly. 

“One more time, for good luck,” Lance said when Keith pulled away, the smallest smile gracing Lance’s bloodstained lips, the same sort of cocky smile that Keith usually couldn’t resist kissing away. 

A third kiss. 

This time, when Keith pulled back, Lance’s eyes were closed, his breathing so shallow it was barely noticeable. 

\---

When Red finally landed in the castle, and the rest of the paladins, sick with worry, rushed in, they found Keith with his forehead resting on Lance’s chest, Lance still as stone, and their hands curled tightly together. Keith’s tears had dried on his cheeks, mixed with Lance’s blood, and it took longer than any of them wanted to remember to convince him to let go of Lance. 

In the end, it took both Hunk and Shiro to forcibly put him into a cryopod to heal his leg. 

\--- 

They buried Lance on a calm planet with pink skies, an ocean of the clearest blue imaginable, and beaches dark as night. 

Because they didn’t know when they’d get back to earth, they couldn’t wait till then. 

They had an empire to finish defeating. 

\---

It wasn’t meant to turn out this way. 

Allura becomes the blue paladin -- though it’s hard, she feels like she’s overstepping no matter how much the others console her that she’s not, that it needs to be done; though she breaks down sobbing when Blue first lights up under her touch -- and Blue accepts her as her own, and Voltron is fine, but Keith-- Keith is not fine. 

Keith feels like he’s falling apart every second, every hour, slowly, inevitably, his edges fraying and unraveling. He’s lost, wandering the castle’s hallways without a purpose, unable to stand the quiet. The rest of the paladins offer what support they can, and Keith is grateful, he is -- but they’re not Lance. No one can be Lance, no one can fill the very specific hole that’s been left in his heart. 

This wound of his gapes open with every step. He can’t forget; he doesn’t want to. 

What he wants is to have Lance back, but Keith knows that’s only the fevered, in-denial part of his mind speaking. 

Instead, Keith feels like he’s tripping over Lance’s ghost at every corner. Every inch of the castle, of the lions, of Keith’s life in space has Lance written into the very core of it, has memories of Lance and of Lance laughing and of Lance being so obnoxiously himself and of Lance and Keith. 

They’re everywhere -- he’s everywhere -- and Keith feels a new pain with each memory. 

The time Lance actually managed to pin him down to the mat during a sparring session, and then littered his face with kisses until Hunk walked in on them accidentally, and then just as quickly backtracked, clapping a hand over his eyes dramatically. They’d laughed, and continued making out, unworried. 

The small observation deck, quiet and hidden away and with glass for the entirety of one of the walls, that they’d stumbled across by chance, where Keith had given Lance his first blowjob. 

The corner of the table in the kitchen that Lance would inevitably sit on and Hunk would inevitably push him off of, yelling about _not putting your nasty ass where I’m gonna cook your food, you heathen_. 

The stretch of hallway from the main control room to their bedrooms, where Lance had cornered Keith and kissed him senseless, all for the express purpose of sneakily getting Keith out of his jacket so that Lance could wear it the whole day instead. He’d pulled on Keith’s jacket while smirking at where Keith was slumped against the wall, lips reddened and shirt crumpled and breath unsteady, and Keith hadn’t been able to think straight (in both senses of the word) for the rest of the day, not when he kept seeing Lance in his jacket. 

In the lions, flying, the memory of Lance’s unbridled enthusiasm and tenacity seeping through every maneuver and every communication, the flow of words that continued no matter how long they fought, how occupied they were by the enemy. 

The quiet evenings in the common area, where everyone would be doing their own thing, relaxing, and Keith would spread out on a couch with his head in Lance’s lap, while Lance and Pidge battled it out at Mario Kart or some other game Pidge had managed to salvage. Keith would just watch lazily, occasionally giving words of advice to Lance, which always resulted in a flick to the forehead from Pidge, perhaps some colorful insults whenever the advice actually helped, which Shiro would then scold Pidge for from across the room, Dad Voice in full force. 

The long dining table, where Keith would inevitably end up with his ankles encased by Lance’s feet, an unsubtle touch and game of footsie that more often than not Allura would roll her eyes at or Shiro would smirk at Keith for, causing Keith to stick his tongue out childishly at Shiro, Lance laughing beside him. 

The large domed room where the lions are kept, where Lance had leaned over to Keith as they worked to rewire a bit of Red’s control and kissed him for the first time. Soft, tentative, scared -- until Keith had gripped Lance’s upper arm, run a hand through his hair, and brought their mouths back together, both of them smiling too widely for it to be a truly good kiss. 

It had still been, arguably, the best kiss in Keith’s life. 

\---

He’s not the only one affected, he knows this. 

All of them are sitting in the kitchen, abandoned schematics from Galra bases littering the table top, when Keith hears pounding footsteps drawing closer, until Pidge rounds the corner, a box held aloft above their head. 

“I fucking found _Mamma Mia!_ ” they screech in victory and joy, and then come to an immediate halt, arms dropping, entire body slumping as though all the life had been sucked right of them. Shiro doesn’t even scold them about their language. The moment lengthens. 

“The songs were… I… He…” Pidge starts, and then swallows visibly and just sits down, right there, on the ground of the kitchen. 

Keith feels numb, rooted to the spot. 

He forgets, sometimes, just how young Pidge is, because they act so old and mature all the time. They all do, but they’re all still so, so young. And right here, Pidge suddenly looks like the scared, lost in space teen they really are, that they all actually are. 

It’s a good thing both Shiro and Hunk drop down beside Pidge, because Keith doesn’t know what to do, can’t really think beyond the sharp pain in his chest. 

Hunk’s got his arms around Pidge, and Shiro’s speaking in low tones, too quiet for even Keith to hear. After a moment, he stands, walks to Keith, one hand coming to rest on Keith’s shoulder, before pulling him into a quick hug. 

Keith clutches at Shiro for a moment before joining Hunk and Pidge on the floor. 

They’re all a bit similarly lost without Lance, Keith realizes. 

Hunk will start to reminisce about some Garrison experience, look around, then look lost for a long moment, story suspended heavily in the air, before continuing with less enthusiasm than before, his partner in crime no longer there to hype the story up and add the details. 

Coran will show up in the training room and leave just as quickly without saying anything, but it’s oddly clear that he was looking for Lance. He never finds him. 

While flying a routine training sequence, Shiro forgets their sharpshooter is gone, and accidentally calls for Lance to take up a defensive position. He quickly corrects himself, directing Allura instead, but there’s silence in the space between the lions and all their gazes are turned down, away from the screens. 

Shiro’s next few commands have an air of forced confidence to them that no one buys. 

He sees Allura flounder into sudden silence at the points where Lance would normally have either said something stupid or tried a ridiculously bad pickup line on her -- even after he and Keith had started dating, the bad lines hadn’t stopped, but it was fine, because everyone knew he didn’t mean it. Everyone could see the way Lance watched Keith, like he could do it for centuries. 

She glances around wildly for a brief second, so short Keith thinks he made it up, and her eyes go sad, slightly empty. 

The conversation continues, but the mood is always so much heavier now. 

\---

They all occupy themselves to the best of their ability, try to fill the space left behind. 

Keith trains harder than before, pushes himself more and more and more, until every muscle screams at him to stop, and then he keeps going. Thinks about how he should have been stronger, how if he hadn’t fallen when the bullet struck his leg Lance would still be here. If he’d only run a little faster. If he’d noticed that last Galra soldier before Lance did. 

It’s always there, in the back of Keith’s head. The thoughts that ask what if he’d died instead. He wouldn’t ever want to do that to Lance, would never wish this sort of pain on Lance, but… Keith thinks it would have been better that way. 

He thinks about Lance asking him to tell his family that Lance loves -- loved -- them, that he missed them so much. They haven’t made it back to earth yet, but Keith knows when they do, he has to find Lance’s family, no matter how hard it will be. 

But that’s why -- that’s why it would better have been Keith gone right now, than Lance. Because Keith has no one left on earth. The only person who mattered back then was Shiro, and Shiro is here. There’s no one on earth who misses him, who worries about him, who thinks about where Keith might be and what he might be doing, if he’s safe and alive. No one who would be heartbroken if they never saw his face again. But Lance had an entire family who loved him, parents who deserved to hold their son again, siblings and cousins and grandparents and-- Now none of them will see Lance again. Lance won’t see them again, and Keith knows how much Lance wanted to, how homesick he got sometimes. 

So why couldn’t it have been Keith instead? 

Keith knows it with a weird certainty, the more he thinks about it. The universe messed up somewhere -- it was supposed to take Keith, and somehow took Lance instead. 

These thoughts push at his head, and so Keith trains instead, and when someone comes to pull him out of his head and out of the training arena, it’s Shiro, who pulls Keith to his chest in a brotherly hug before pushing him towards his room to sleep, instead of Lance, who used to show up when Keith lost himself in his training, who would interrupt his hyper-focus with a stunning laugh and quick smile, with kisses and teasing. 

Shiro pushes him to bed, and Keith finds himself, night after night, alone in a room that used to feel too small, and then felt just right, and now -- now it feels enormous, gaping around him like a jagged wound. An organ with a piece punched out. Missing. 

The first night Keith sleeps alone, he doesn’t sleep at all, not till it’s nearly time to get up again. Their room -- his room -- is too quiet. It’s silent. A tomb. No murmurs of _buenas noches_ or _te amo_ as Keith drifts into sleep. No Lance breathing noisily onto the back of Keith’s neck. Keith was always the little spoon -- the bed was a single, still, because they’d never bothered to ask for a different room with a bigger bed once Lance moved into Keith’s permanently -- and so they slept pressed together closely, Lance’s arm pulling Keith tight, Keith with his fingers curled around Lance’s hand. 

But the bed is suddenly too big, even though it’s just the right size for a single person. Somewhere in the night, Keith finds himself unable to breathe, memories pressing at him from all sides, and he slides to the floor, sits with his knees pulled up and forehead pressed hard against them until his breathing evens out and he can stand again. As he does, his gaze catches on an army green pile in the corner of the room -- Lance’s jacket, discarded in the early morning before the mission. 

Keith pulls it on, pulls it up across his nose as he gets back into the bed. It feels like Lance, smells like him, and he lets that comforting sense wash over him. 

With his eyes closed, he can almost imagine that Lance is still there, behind him, weirdly silent, but that in a few moments he’ll lean over Keith’s shoulder, drop kisses down his jawbone and to his mouth. That he’ll end up with his arms around Keith’s shoulder and Keith’s hands on Lance’s cheeks and in his hair, lazily making out until they sink, tired, into the bed together, and drift into sleep, Lance’s fingers tracing light patterns up and down Keith’s shoulders. 

It’s so real, for a brief moment, that when Keith forces himself back into this grim reality, it feels almost violent, like someone dunking his head in a bucket of ice. 

He closes his eyes, breathes deeply as tears pool at the corner of his eyes, and misses Lance with every thread of his being, a visceral hurt that doesn’t go away, just ebbs and flows, stronger some moments than others. 

When he finally sleeps, it’s with the jacket pulled tight around him and tears drying on his cheeks.

**Author's Note:**

> la: write keith wearing lance's jacket  
> my jackass brain: yes good so make keith wear lance's jacket bc lance died n keith is upset n in pain n it's one of the only Lance™ things he has left
> 
> if this succs lmk so that i can delete it and my online existence and disappear into the scottish highlands 
> 
> find me on twitter @jesperfxhey and on tumblr @reneewvlker <3


End file.
